The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality. (Charles Baudelaire)

Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael (or Ruysdael) (c. 1628-1682): Bij Duurstede – These clouds, the boat and the ocean, conjure up the world of Duparc’s great song.

Henri Duparc (1848-1933).

There are composers, and then there is Duparc. There is French song and then there is Duparc. Even if all he wrote was this one song, his name would be immortal.  What a curious story: a highly original and gifted composer with a nationalist passion for French music so passionate that he became one of the founder members of a society of French Composers. He wrote a handful of songs, regarded as the definitive arrival of the French Artsong. Then at 37, he abruptly ceases to compose and destroys every single one of his compositions he could lay his hands on. The last 48 years of his life he spent in musical silence, tending to his family, painting a bit, taking refuge in his religious faith.

Henri Duparc

Graham Johnson writes: “He is a prince amongst composers, admitted into the royal enclosure…” [Johnson, Graham & Stokes, Richard: "A French Song Companion", Oxford University Press, New York, 2000, P.164] 

He went to Lourdes, hoping to find a cure of a mysterious condition which killed all desire to create. A mental illness, diagnosed at the time as “neurasthenia“, caused him abruptly to cease composing at age 37, in 1885. The fact that he went blind as well, seems a terrible price to pay for the glory of the 17 or so songs which survived.

Emile Deroy (1820 – 46): Portrait of Charles Baudelaire (painted c.1844)

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy (Charles Baudelaire)

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.  Inspired by a brief but intense love for the actress Marie Daubrun, his most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire’s highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term “modernity” (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

The poem is remarkably un-erotic in direct meaning – given the subtext – but a voluptuous, sensuous quality pervades. The poet is attempting to seduce the object of his desire. The voyage promises the pleasures of the eye, ear, mind, and yes, certainly the body as well. The journey the lover is being invited on is the fulfillment of their dreams, as much as any physical place.

Jacob Isaaksz. van Ruisdael (c. 1628-1682)

~~~~ My child, my sister, Think of the rapture  To go there, live together,  Love at leisure, Love and death in the  country  that looks like you.

From the opening notes, we are on the water. The boat is already sailing.The quasi-tremolandos remind one briefly of Shéhérazade, Ravel’s oriental creature of delight and mystery, still to arrive in 1898. But these are measured semi-quavers, not quivers.

There is an old-world restraint and grandeur about this journey. This is not an impetuous young lover ready to whisk is beloved away to some foreign shore where they will have make passionate love under gawdy tropical flowers, living on fruit and sunlight. This is an older lover, already aware that his beloved’s eyes are hides treachery, that their love is already doomed to die. He compares the changeable landscape to the emotions of his beloved – hardly a recipe for a lifetime of marital bliss. The doom and depth of emotion in those first few bars are reminiscent of Fauré’s Automne, but in particular it is the fall on the second bar, to the augmented 6th that exerts an emotional pull unique to Duparc. Wagnerian without the megalomania, it sets us up for a journey unlike any we have been on before.

As the poet imagines the joys of them living together, the dark C Minor gives way to a ray of C Major light breaking through the clouds.

The poet describes how they will live: to love endlessly and to die. “Aimer à loisir, Aimer et mourir” Duparc creates a melodic cell as instantly memorable as it is encapsulating of the dichotomy it is expressing. Languorously stretching up to the high G, it droops back down to the D.

~~~~ Wet suns, These scrambled skies that hold such mysterious charms for my spirit, of your treacherous eyes, shining through their tears…

Extraordinarily expressive harmonies describe the unsettled skies, and the appeal they hold for the poet is partly because of the very insecurity – both of the physical landscape, as much as the “treacherous eyes” of his beloved. As he describes tears running from her eyes, the key changes again to an illuminated C Major.

~~~~ There all is order and beauty, Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

Here follows Un peu plus vite, a passage that seems to suspend all movement. The poet is creating an idealised vision of the life they will live, suspended forever in a state of love and bliss, where all is Luxe, calme et volupté, variously translated as Luxury, calm and voluptuousness, or allure, Luxury, calm and pleasure or even beauty, Luxury, peace, and pleasure. Chords spread across the entire keyboard are held, while the voice abandons its augmented intervals and sensual extensions above the stave, and trails off to “quasi-parlando” recitative on the same note -first the higher C, then dropping to the lower G, as the poet descends into an inner world. But is it a dream? Perhaps a memory? A wish?

~~~~ See on the canals sleep these vessels whose mood is those of wandering vagabondes; This is to satisfy your slightest desire, they come  from the ends of the world.

As if opening his eyes from this exquisite dream, the rolling semi-quavers describe what he sees:

Salomon van Ruisdael – The Habour

Since Duparc leaves out verse 2 of Baudelaire’s poem, it isn’t immediately clear if the poet and object of his affection are still standing looking at the boats that would take them to the Orient, or if he is describing what they see once they arrive. The rolling semi-quavers of the opening recreate the shimmering surface of the water, in which the boats are reflected that have traveled across the vast oceans to fulfill her every wish. This passage is truncated and moves into one of the trickiest passages to play smoothly and evenly.

~~~~ The setting suns clothe the fields, the canals, the whole city, in hyacinth and gold; The world is asleep in warm light.

The notes shimmer like the most effective Impressionist paintings, and this time, when the warm light of C Major beaks though, it is a real glowing Fortissimo.

Amid the filigree of fantasy, Duparc combines two wonderful thoughts he had earlier

The theme about loving for ever, and dying (“Aimer à loisir, Aimer et mourir” ) is combined with the repetition of the description of their perfect love. (“Luxe, calme et volupté”)

In one gesture, Duparc creates a Voyage that is both physical and spiritual. The journey is both internal and external. Like Johannes Vermeer’s Astronomer, the journey is undertaken without leaving the study. As if he can see the entire trajectory of the relationship, before even embarking on it.

Johannes Vermeer – Astonomer

“L’invitation au Voyage“, from Les Fleurs du Mal, in 1. Spleen et Idéal, no. 53 (Original French Text by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), English translation by Albert Combrink)

Duparc sets only verses 1 and 3 of the original complete poem, found HERE.

It is virtually impossible to translate this poem successfully: Literal translations lose the essential rhythmic beauty of the poem, and poetic versions lose the essence of the meaning. Since I use this article for my personal study, I have erred on the side of the literal. Greater literary minds than myself can tackle this problem. I wish merely to make the meaning of the words as clear as possible for the student of this great work. There are however many translations available online. I refer you to a very meaningful versions by J.K. Ellis, William Aggeler and Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose creative translations add immensely to one’s understanding of the poem.

Verse 1 (French)

Mon enfant, ma sœur,
Songe à la douceur
D’aller là-bas vivre ensemble,
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble.
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.
Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Verse 1 (English)

My child, my sister,
Think of the rapture
To go there, live together,
Love at leisure,
Love and death
in the  country that looks like you.
Wet suns
These scrambled skies
For my spirit the charms
so mysterious
Of your treacherous eyes,
Shining through their tears.
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

Verse 3 (In Fench)

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l’humeur est vagabonde;C’est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde.
Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D’hyacinthe et d’or;
Le monde s’endort
Dans une chaude lumière!
Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Verse 3 (In English)

See on the canals
Sleep these vessels
Whose mood is those of wandering vagabondes;
This is to satisfy
Your slightest desire
They come from the ends of the world.
The suns which are setting
Clothe the fields,
The canals, the whole city,
In hyacinth and gold;
The world is asleep
In warm light!
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, calm and
voluptuousness.

Download Free Sheet Music (PDF) of L’invitation au Voyage by Heni Duparc:

L’invitation au Voyage by Heni Duparc in C Minor (PDF of Original Key)

Some landmark recordings of Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage:

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Gérard Souzay (Fench Baritone)
and possibly Dalton Baldwin

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Jonas Kaufmann (German Tenor) and Helmut Deutsch

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Hugues Cuenod (French Tenor) and Geoffrey Parssons

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Diana Damrau (Soprano) and Xavier de Mestre (HARP)

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Barbara Hendicks (Sopano) and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Jessye Norman (Soprano) and Geoffrey Parssons

Duparc’s L’invitation au Voyage: Nelly Miricioiu (Soprano) and David Harper

Read more about Charles Baudelaire HERE.

The Société Nationale de Musique:

The Société Nationale de Musique was founded on February 25, 1871 to promote French music and to allow young composers to present their music in public. The motto was “Ars gallica“. It was founded by Romain Bussine and Camille Saint-Saëns, who shared the presidency, and early members included César Franck, Ernest Guiraud, Jules Massenet, Jules Garcin, Gabriel Fauré, Alexis de Castillon, Henri Duparc, Théodore Dubois, and Paul Taffanel. It was conceived in reaction to the tendency in French music to favor vocal and operatic music over orchestral music, and to further the cause of French music in contrast to the Germanic tradition. “They were determined to unite in their efforts to spread the gospel of French music and to make known the works of living French composers. . . . According to their statutes . . . their intention was to act ‘in brotherly unity, with an absolute forgetfulness of self’” [Vallas, Léon. César Franck. Tr. by Hubert J. Foss from La véritable histoire de César Franck (1949). London: Harap, 1951. Reprinted Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1973, P.135]

L’invitation au Voyage: other settings

The magnificent peom was imortalised by (Marie Eugène) Henri (Fouques) Duparc (1848-1933) who wrote “L’invitation au Voyage” in 1870, published 1894, stanzas 1,3.

Other settings of this poem include:

~ Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, 1918.
~ Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, 1870.
~ Gustave Charpentier (1860-1956) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, 1895, published 1895, from Les Fleurs du Mal, no. 4.
~ Jules Cressonois (1823-1883) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, 1863.
~ Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, 1913.
~ Benjamin Louis Paul Godard (1849-1895) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, op. 114, published c1889, stanzas 1,3 [voice and piano], Paris, Durand & Schoenewerck
~ Aleksandr Tikhonovich Gretchaninov (1864-1956) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, op. 48 no. 2, from Les Fleurs du Mal, no. 2, note: also set in Russian
~ Lucien Hillemacher (1860-1909) and by Paul Hillemacher (1852-1933) , “L’invitation au Voyage”, from Vingt Mélodies, no. ?
~ Georges Adolphe Hüe (1858-1948) , “L’invitation au Voyage”

Acalanto da Rosa (Cláudio Santoro 1919-1989), set to a text by (Marcus) Vinícius de Moraes (1913-1980)

Cláudio Franco de Sá Santoro (1919-1989)

Santoro is a rather mysterious figure whose music is not as well known as it deserves to be. He is mainly known as a gifted violinist and founder of the Brazilian Philharmonic. He studied in Europe and garnered many prizes and awards. Educator, performer, writer, organiser, lecturer in piano, violin and eventually composition in Heidelberg, Germany – Santoro’s life’s work is vast and varied. His music – from what little I have heard – falls in two main groups: quite severe classical works such as String Quartets and Symphonies (some of it quite academic), and music of a more popular vein. Such a gem, is Acalanto da Rosa. Santoro was born in the Brazilian province Amazonas, and was sent to study in Rio de Janeiro, where he met the poet Moraes, who provided texts to many of Santoro’s works.

(Marcus) Vinícius de Moraes (1913-1980)

Marcus Vinicius da Cruz e Mello Moraes (October 19, 1913 – July 9, 1980), also known as Vinícius de Moraes and nicknamed O Poetinha (the little poet), was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was a seminal figure in contemporary Brazilian music. As a poet, he wrote lyrics for a great number of songs that became all-time classics. He was also a composer of bossa nova, a playwright, a diplomat and, as an interpreter of his own songs, he left several important albums.

Acalanto da Rosa (Portuguese text by Vinícius de Moraes)

Dorme a estrela do céu
Dorme a rosa em seu jardim
Dorme a lua no mar
Dorme o amor dentro de mim
É preciso pisar leve
Ai, é preciso não falar

Meu amor se adormece
Quão suave é o seu perfume
Dorme em paz rosa pura

Lullaby of the Rose (English translation of text by Vinícius de Moraes)

A star sleeps in the sky,
The rose sleeps in its garden
The moon rests in the sea,
Love sleeps inside of me.
You must tread softly,
Ah, you must not speak.

My love is slumbering,
How sweet is her perfume,
Sleep in peace, pure rose,
Your slumber has no end.

Read a full biography of the composer Claudio Santoro HERE.

Listen to soprano Rosana Lamosa interpret this little gem:

World War 2: French soldier weeping

“Bleuet” (Francis Poulenc), written in 1939, setting a text by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) written in 1917.

This extraordinary song links the twin catastrophes of World War I and World War II. Italian born Guillaume Apollinaire fought in World War I and, in 1916, received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple, from which he would never fully recover. The war-weakened Apollinaire died of influenza during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Shortly before his death he wrote a poem, which, despite its creative and unusal visual layout, is remarkably direct in its emotional communication. A narrator adresses a young soldier of 20. The battle will start at 5pm. The only question is the manner in which he will die. The heartbreakingly matter-of-fact poem was set by Francis Poulenc, in October 1939, one month after Adolf Hitler initiated World War II by invading Poland.

Guillaume Apollinaire – Italian born accomplice of the man who stole the “Mona Lisa” – here pictured after his shrapnel wound in WW1.

The song is dedicated to André Bonnélie. Poulenc had known the young man since he was a boy, and on that day, had been told that the young Bonnélie had been killed in battle. He then set to work on the poem. After completing the song, Poulenc found out that the message had been incorrect, and that the young man was indeed in good health and about to get married. Poulenc was so delighted and relived, he decided on the spot to dedicate the song to him. [Schmidt, Carl B., Entrancing muse: a documented biography of Francis Poulenc, Pendragon Press, New York, P.262]

Poulenc and his lover Bernac – for whom he wrote the majority of his vocal works – were both in active military duty. At this point, France’s losses were still minor – compared to the horrors ahead. Poulenc seems to capture a heartbreaking premonition of what was to come. The song lay too high for Pierre Bernac’s baritone: Poulenc must have been conscious of this when he wrote it. Why did he not want his beloved to be the narrator? There must have been fear that this might have been sung TO his lover. Indeed, Swiss tenor Hugues Cuenod was the first to perform it, with Poulenc at the piano. [Ibid. P.388] Poulenc and Cuenod had met in 1930 at the studio of Nadia Boulanger – a name that pops up time and again in the lives of Parisian creative artists of all description.

“Bleuet”

The title is an untranslateable conflagration of images.

“Bleuet” refers to a blue cornflower, representing young life in full bloom, but also growing on the fields of War.

French Soldiers had blue uniforms. “Blue” was slang for the young soldiers. By using the diminutive, “Bluet” (Little Blue), the narrator’s tender affection for the doomed soldier is made all the more poignant. [Photo: U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Rick Scavetta, Remembrance Day Ceremony, 2012 - 5th Signal Theater Strategic Command]

Barely a few months after Poulenc wrote “Bleuet”, Hitler marched into Paris. Germans dictated that the armistice between Germany and France be signed in 1940 in the same railroad car on the same siding near the same French town of Compiègne as had been the WWI armistice between the Allies and Germany in 1918. A newsreel showing Hitler sightseeing from a balcony overlooking the Eiffel Tower circulated around the world. The humiliation of France was complete.

“Bleuet” (Francis Poulenc): Sung by Mark Padmore (tenor) and Iain Burnside (Pian0)

“Bleuet” (Francis Poulenc): Sung by Anthony Rolfe-Johnson (Tenor) and Graham Johnson (Piano)

“Bleuet” (Francis Poulenc): Sung as part of a complete performance of the complete cycle “Cinq poèmes d’Apollinaire”, by Bruno Laplante (Baritone) and Marc Durand (Piano). (Recorded 1978).

0.00 Dans le jardin d’Anna
3.25 Allons, plus vite
6.10 Montparnasse
9.30 Rosemonde
11.10 Bleuet

Buy a copy of the Sheet Music of  “Bleuet” by Francis Poulenc (Text by Guillaume Apollinaire) HERE.

“Bleuet” (F. Poulenc), Text by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918): Lyrics in French

          Jeune homme
          De vingt ans
          Qui as vu des choses si affreuses
          Que penses-tu des hommes de ton enfance
 Tu                                Tu 
   as
     vu                          connais 
       la
         mort            la bravoure et la ruse,
             en
               face
                   plus
                       de
                         cent
                             fois
                                 tu
                                   ne
                                     sais
   Transmets ton intrépidité             pas
                                            ce 
   À ceux qui viendront                       que
                                                 c'est
        Après toi                                     que
                                                         la
                                                           vie

        Jeune homme
 Tu es joyeux, ta mémoire est ensanglantée
        Ton âme est rouge aussi
            De joie
 Tu as absorbé la vie de ceux qui sont morts près de toi

     Tu as de la décision
 Il est 17 heures et tu saurais
              Mourir
 Sinon mieux que tes aînés
       Du moins plus pieusement
       Car tu connais mieux la mort que la vie
       Ô douceur d'autrefois,
           Lenteur immémoriale.

Trench Warfare: World War I

“Bleuet” (F. Poulenc), Text by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918): Lyrics in English

Young man
Of twenty
You who have seen such terrible things
What do you think of the men from your childhood
You know what bravery is and cunning
You have faced death more than a hundred times
You do not know what life is
Hand down your fearlessness
To those who shall come
After you
Young man
You are joyous your memory is steeped in blood
Your soul is red also
With joy
You have absorbed the life of those who died beside you
You are resolute
It is 1700 hours and you would know
How to die
If not better than your elders
At least with great piety
For you are better acquainted with death than life
O sweetness of bygone days
Slow moving
beyond all memory

Fleurs (Francis Poulenc, Louise Vilmorin)

From Fiançailles pour rire (6 mélodies) 1939 for medium Voice to Poèmes de Louise Vilmorin:
1. the Dame d’André – 2. Dans l’herbe – 3. Il vole – 4. Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant – 5. Violon – 6. Fleurs

“Fleurs” (text by Louise Vilmorin – in French and English)

Fleurs promises, fleurs tenues dans tes bras,

Promised flowers, flowers held in your arms, 

Fleurs sorties des parenthèses d’un pas,

Flowers from a step’s parentheses,

Qui t’apportait ces fleurs l’hiver

Who brought you these flowers in winter

Saupoudrés du sable des mers?

Sprinkled with the sea’s sand?

Sable de tes baisers, fleurs des amours fanées

Sand of your kisses, flowers of faded loves

Les beaux yeux sont de cendre et dans la cheminée

Your lovely eyes are ashes and in the hearth

Un cœur enrubanné de plaintes Brûle avec ses images saintes.

A moan-beribboned heart Burns with its sacred images.

Fleurs promises, fleurs tenues dans tes bras,

Promised flowers, flowers held in your arms,

Qui t’apportait ces fleurs l’hiver

Who brought you these flowers in winter

Saupoudrés du sable des mers?

Sprinkled with the sea’s sand?

Louise de Vilmorin

More about the Poet Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969)

Marie Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin (4 April 1902-26 December 1969) was a French novelist, poet and journalist. Born in the family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris, she was heir to a great family fortune of the French seed company Vilmorin. Her material deals with love, death, and absence, and use fairy-tale elements, fantasy, ellipsis, lyricism and include – in addition to three volumes of poetry – Le Lit à colonnes (1941), Le Retour d’Érica (1946), Julietta (1951), Madame de (1951, filmed by Max Ophüls 1952), Histoire d’aimer (1955), Le Violon (1960), L’Heure Maliciôse (1967). Her wistful distilled lyrics celebrate Nature, recall childhood and lost love.

In 1935, Jean Cocteau wrote of Vilmorin:

 ~ ‘…une sorte de prodige: une femme qui invente des choses illustres … neuves, fraîches, comiques, poétiques, féroces, légères jusqu’à l’incroyable’.

~ “…a kind of miracle: a woman who invented famous things … new, fresh, comic, poetic, fierce, light up the incredible” ["Researching the Song: A Lexicon", Emmans, Shirley & Lewis, Wilbur Watkins, Oxford University Press., New York 2006 P.469]

Louise de Vilmorin

Poulenc and Vilmorin were close friends and Poulenc is said to have enjoyed the “unashamedly feminine nature of her poetry” [ibid, P.470] This is slightly ironic, since the Cycle was composed for Baritone Pierre Bernac. [Schmidt, Carl B., Entrancing muse: a documented biography of Francis Poulenc, Pendragon Press, New York, P.260] Poulenc recalled her reading the poems to him from her sickbed in a hotel. There was gentlemanly rivalry and camaraderie between Poulenc and Georges Auric, both who wanted to set Vilmorin poems to music and evidently discussed between them who would get which poems. It seems that Poulenc had jumped the gun a bit, pipping Auric to the post in an earlier set of songs. He wrote to his great teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger, that he had sketched six songs, but that he had to give up on one of his favourite poems “La Jeune Sangue” that was earmarked for this cycle, in favour of Auric. [Ibid. P.260]

In the end it was soprano Genevieve Touraine – not Bernac – who sang the premiere only in 1942.

Poulenc and “Fleurs”

The accompaniment of the song is typical of that spiritual, devotional element that is so prominent in Poulenc’s work. While this is not a religious work at all, the accompaniment recalls the slow movement of the Cello Sonata (“Cavatine”) or even more directly the organ and choral writing of his “Stabat Mater” or even the “Litanies à la Vierge Noire” (“Litanies to the Black Madonna”) (1936) and the Mass in G (1937).

Poulenc: Fleurs

The Piano doesn’t merely double the vocal melody, but rather hugs it, embracing it and occasionally letting go while it carries the glorious melody on its own with the voice commenting on, rather than leading the proceedings.

Poulenc: Cello Sonata – the song and the slow movement of the Cello Sonata seem to inhabit a similar space of religious awe.

Poulenc had been a military reservist in the 1st regiment of the military domiciled at Noizay since 1934. Bernac was called up to active service in September 1939 and on 19 November Poulenc was assigned a “Special Classification”. “The wait wore on his nerves and caused him to envision numerous morbid scenarios. He told Simone Girard that he would gladly sacrifice a leg or two if his hands were spared”. [Ibid. P261] He had even wrote his beloved Nadia Boulanger a letter in case he got killed in action.

It was a time of particular emotional upset for Poulenc. He had lived through World War I and was about to live through a second.

The Black Virgin of Rocamadour

A few years earlier, in 1936, Poulenc was profoundly affected by the tragic death (in a car-accident) of another composer – one-time rival and later close friend – Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936). This led him to his first visit to the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. Here, before the famous wooden statue of the Madonna with a young child on her lap, Poulenc experienced a life-changing transformation. Poulenc was deeply moved by his experience there. He wrote the opening measures of Litanies à la Vierge Noire (1936) in the Chapel of Our Lady of Roc-Amadour, and these notes marked a turning point in his compositional career as well as his return to the Catholic faith. Thereafter, he produced a sizable output of liturgical music or compositions based on religious themes.

Litanies à la Vierge Noire (1936) – Accentus Chamber Choir under the direction of Laurence Equilbey.

Nathalie Stutzmann (alto) & Inger Sodergren (piano): The complete “Fiancailles pour rire” (Poulenc)

The greatest recording of this song, in my opinion, is by much-loved, much-missed, soprano Arleen Augér on the album Love Songs: Arleen Augér sings Copland, Strauss, Poulenc. You can listen to the song HERE.

Read more about the Cult of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour HERE.

Buy a copy of Poulenc’s Song Cycle Fiançailles pour rire HERE.

Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes (1926) to an anonymous 17th Century text.

This charming Serenade rocks along in a gentle 6/8 rhythm, almost more lullaby than love song. Encountered more often in its cello transcription, divorced form the text, it is a sweet, seductive little miniature: a tasty petit-fours to slip in between larger items on the menu. The text however, is extremely sexually suggestive, positively dripping in double entendre. It might be possible to argue a case for reading things into it, if taking the poem on its own. Put it in the context of the rest of the cycle – which includes Chanson à boire which was banned at Harvard (a titbit gleaned from the astonishing Graham Johnson’s Chanson-Bible: the “French Song Companion“) – it is positively obscene. What was it about Poulenc – the composer of great sacred works such as the “Gloria” and “Te Deum” and an opera about Carmelite Nuns – that would delight in shocking his audience with this miniature “Carmina Burana”? Adultery, promiscuity, masturbation and sex-toys hardly seem the stock-in-trade of the song cycle. And yet, here they are.

In The Diary of My Songs, Poulenc remarked of the Chansons Gaillardes, “I am fond of this collection where I tried to show that outright obscenity can adapt itself to music…The texts were found in an anthology of songs of the seventeenth century (an old edition).” [Adrian Corleonis] [Francis Poulenc, Journal de mes mélodies, éditions Grasset, 1964 ; réédité en 1993, texte intégral établi et annoté par Renaud Machart, éditions Cicéro et Salabert, Paris (ISBN 1993 978-2908369106)]

A shocking, seductive, multilayered little song, which, if not quite yet scaling the heights of Poulenc’s mature mélodies, is definitely worth a stop-over.

Pierre Bernac and Francis Poulenc

Pierre Bernac and the Sérénade

The first performance of the Chansons Gaillardes was given by Pierre Bernac – then still young and relatively unkown at the start of his career -  with Poulenc accompanying on May 2, 1926, in company with the premiere of the latter’s Trio for oboe, bassoon, and piano (dedicated to Falla). Bernac was unimpressed both with the sexual content of the cycle as well as the composer’s setting, and initially it even soured their collaboration and friendship. He must have overcome his initial difficulties with both the composer and his music as the two later became lovers, and Bernac actually became Poulenc’s muse. From 1934 until his retirement in 1960, Bernac was Poulenc’s preferred interpreter, giving premieres and recording many of his songs with the composer, including two numbers from Chansons Gaillardes.

South African composer Peter Klatzow recalls the singer:
“Pierre Bernac came to the College of Music in 1964 to give master classes in French art song. He was a courtly, rather formal man and I can only imagine how offended he might have been by these words. His knowledge of all French art song was formidable. I accompanied for Eiko Nakamuro (a Japanese singer) and he also asked me to accompany for some other students. He was particularly fond of Poulenc’s song “C” – explaining background and interpretation in great detail. I cherish the memory.”

Pierre Fournier and Francis Poulenc recording for RAI in 1953

Pierre Fournier and the Sérénade

Poulenc formed a performing duo with the great cellist Pierre Fournier. They recorded many works together, including a delightful Debussy Sonata and many works by Les Six.  Having ignored requests for a sonata from no less a cellist than Rostropovich, Poulenc wrote a cello sonata for Fournier. They performed and recorded it together and various transcriptions of it exist. Poulenc and Fournier give a remarkably unsentimental performance. Fournier enjoys the large interval leaps and Poulenc emphasises the chord changes and rhythmic details. One wonders if the composer performed it with a straight face.

Sérénade (No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes for Voice and Piano by Francis Poulenc ) has been beautifully transcribed for Cello with Piano Accompaniment by Maurice Gendron.

* Buy a Cello Trancription of the song, Sérénade  – from the Chansons Gaillardes  (No.8) by Maurice Gendron, HERE.

* Download a Pdf of a Cello Arrangement of Poulenc’s Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes:
Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes Arranged for Cello. (Arranger unknown)

Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes, (Transcription for Cello): Played by cellist Pierre Fournier (Dedicatee of Poulenc’s Cello Sonata) and Francis Poulenc on the piano. Recorded for RAI 1953.

Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes (Anonymous 17th Century poet): Sung by Bernard Kruysen, baritone, accompanied by Noël Lee, piano.

Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes - French Text (Anonymous 17th Century)

Avec une si belle main,
Que servent tant de charmes,
Que vous tenez du dieu malin,
Bien manier les armes.
Et quand cet Enfant est chagrin
Bien essuyer ses larmes

Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes – English Translation of the Text (Anonymous 17th Century)

With a hand so beautiful,
That offers so many charms,
That you must, God knows,
Handle a weapon well!
And when that infant is sad,
Wipe well its tears.

Sérénade – No.8 from the song cycle Chansons Gaillardes, (Transcription for Cello): Played LIVE by the transcriber of this version, cellist Maurice Gendron and pianist Christian Ivaldi, recorded for television in 1963

 ”La mer est plus belle”, L. 81 no. 1 (1891)

Published 1891 [voice and piano], from Trois mélodies, no. 1, Paris, Hamelle, by Claude Achille Debussy (1862-1918) , set to a text by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) , no title, from Sagesse, in Sagesse III, no. 15, published 1880, dedicated to Ernest Chausson.

References to the sea abound in Debussy’s works, sometimes by directly giving them titles that refer to the ocean or water, as well as the surging rolling of waves of sound that characterises so much of his compositional style. It appears that references to the sea also refer like a leitmotif through his writings and correspondence. Simon Trezise writes: “In 1889, as a young man away from his first great successes, he was asked in a questionnaire what he would like to be, if not himself, to which he replied ‘a sailor’”. [Simon Trezise, Debussy: La Mer, Cambridge University press, Australia, 1994, P.1]

Impressionist composers were naturally drawn to depictions of the elements. Water-based titles of works are strewn throughout Debussy’s list of works: Le jet d’eau, La mer est plus belle, Jardins sous la pluie, Reflets dans l’eau, Poissons d’or, La cathédrale engloutie, Ondine, En bateau, Pour remercier la pluie au matin, Sirènes, La mer, De l’aube à midi sur la mer, Jeux de vagues, Dialogue du vent et de la mer. References to water also abound in the mélodies for voice and piano. Debussy carefully selected them from the works of many symbolic poets, including Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé.

“The Great Wave of Kanogawa” by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎?, October 31, 1760 (exact date questionable) – May 10, 1849) which would later grace the cover of the first publication of Debussy’s  orchestral masterpiece La Mer. It encapsulates both the French composer’s fascination with the art of the East, and the depictions of Nature and the sea in particular.

In the great orchestral cycle La Mer, the depiction of the sea is -  for all its richness – a musical depiction of the sea. The Japanese painting with which it is so closely associated – despite its almost religious awe at the beauty and power of nature, is still a depiction of the sea. The song, La mer est plus belle is minute in comparison and even in this small scale it draws in a multitude of references.

The song was written in 1891, the same year as the Fêtes Galantes Première Livre. Debussy had already written some substantial works in the song genre: Mandoline, and the cycles Ariettes oubliées, and Poèmes de Baudelaire. Some piano works later to grow to fame were already behind him: the two Arabesques, Suite Bergamasque which contains the almost-overplayed Clair de Lune. The great Impressionist works were still to come:  the masterful but not unflawed opera Pelléas et Mélisande, the great piano works such as the two books of Préludes, and the great orchestral works Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune and La Mer.

Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) – Rouen Cathedral

Few works seem to sum up Impressionist painting as well as the 30 paintings Claude Monet made of Rouen Cathedral around the time this song was composed. When Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral series, he had long since been impressed with the way light imparts to a subject a distinctly different character at different times of the day and the year, and as atmospheric conditions change. For Monet, the effects of light on a subject became as important as the subject itself. Historically, the series was well-timed. In the early 1890s, France was seeing a revival of interest in Catholicism and the subject was well-received. Apart from its religious significance, Rouen Cathedral, built in the Gothic style, represented all that was best in French history and culture, being a style of architecture that was admired and adopted by many European countries during the Middle Ages.

Monet’s “Rouen Cathedral” series is both the perfect introduction to, and summary of, Impressionist Art.

Oriental(ist) art, as well as the great wave of Impressionist painters obviously greatly inspired Debussy. There is a dreamy, indistinct and almost “luminous” quality which Debussy shares with the work of the great Impressionists. His music seems to attempt to recreate the subtle nuances in shading and light, which was the major characteristic of Impressionism. The object is of less importance than the effect of the light which is projected on it.

Statue of Our Lady Stella Maris Silema (Malta)

The religious references in the song relate to Mary’s religious title as “Star of the Sea”. While not creating a religious tone as such in the song, there is a pious turn of harmony which is very effective, somehow softening the torrents of the ocean at the mere mention of Mary and her prayers. Allusion to her prayers also inspired a Leitmotif in the accompaniment.

Our Lady, Star of the Sea is an ancient title for the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. The words Star of the Sea are a translation of the Latin title Stella Maris. The title was used to emphasize Mary’s role as a sign of hope and as a guiding star for Christians, especially gentiles, whom the Old Testament Israelites metaphorically referred to as The Sea, meaning anyone beyond the “coasts”, or, that is to say, sociopolitical, and religious (Mosaic law), borders of Israelite territory. Under this title, the Virgin Mary is believed to intercede as a guide and protector of those who travel or seek their livelihoods on the sea. This aspect of the Virgin has led to Our Lady, Star of the Sea, being named as patroness of the Catholic missions to seafarers, the Apostleship of the Sea, and to many coastal churches being named Stella Maris or Mary, Star of the Sea. This devotion towards Mary with this ancient title is popular throughout the Catholic world.

Workshop of Filippo Lippi: “Madonna and Child”- Circa 1446. The star on the Virgin’s blue robe alludes to her epithet of Stella Maris, the Star of the Sea.

Debussy’s religious views were not conventional:
“I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, … and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. … To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer.” [Claude Debussy: His Life and Works (1933) by Léon Vallas, p. 225]

Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844 – 1896)

The major representatives of the Symbolist movement affecting Debussy are the French poets Verlaine and Mallarmé. As the name implies, among the primary goals of the Symbolist movement was the usage of symbols, images to represent reality, and to evoke meanings beyond the material world, falling into the higher realities of the world of illusion, of dreams. Water suggested calm tranquillity, introspection. Fire was a symbol of passion, rage, etc. Symbolism is technically considered to be a literary school, popular in Paris in the 1880′s and 1890s and is identified with ambiguity and indirect communication and use of symbols. The Symbolist movement in literature truly closely paralleled the impressionistic aspects in music.

Download Free Sheet Music of  Debussy’s “La mer est plus belle”, L. 81 no. 1 (1891)
La mer est plus belle, L. 81 no. 1 (1891) (Debussy & Verlaine) G Minor.pdf

An Analysis of “La mer est plus belle”, L. 81 no. 1 (1891)

Verse 1:
La mer est plus belle
Que les cathédrales,
Nourrice fidèle,
Berceuse de râles,
La mer sur qui prie
La Vierge Marie!

The sea is more beautiful Than any cathedral; A nurse faithful, A cradle-song of groans; The sea over which prays The Virgin Mary!

Marked a vigorous Animé, the song launches forth into the crashing waves from the first note. Thundering and rolling arpeggios in D major, sounding like the Tonic key. However, the Key Signature is G Minor, so we are setting sail on the Dominant Chord. The voice, also marked Forte has longer note-values against the rippling piano, making it a very powerful oration, a sailor on the bough of the ship – heading straight into the waves, intoxicated by the power and beauty. Huge, dramatic shifts of harmony from Dominant to Flattened Seventh and back again set up an unusual and unsettling harmonic progression  (D major to F Major,  and later again from G Major to B Flat Major). Is this the cradle song of groans to which the text refers? Debussy definitely emphases the words “Berceuse de râles” (Lullaby of groans) with a lurching excursion to B flat major on the off-beat – the unsettling groan of an unexpected wave crashing into the ship? The voice reaches its first climax on the high F of “La Mer sur qui prie”. While notated in G minor, we experience the return to D major on the name of Mary, as a return from the Flattened Sixth to the Dominant. Debussy introduces two simple Belltones in the accompaniment at the mention of the Virgin Mary. This simple gesture instantly marries Hokusai’s “The Great Wave of Kanogawa” with the Cathedral of Monet.

Verse 2:
Elle a tous les dons
Terribles et doux.
J’entends ses pardons
Gronder ses courroux.
Cette immensité
N’a rien d’entêté.

It has all qualities, Terrible and sweet. I hear its forgiveness, The rumble of its anger; This immensity Has no intentions.

Surprisingly square in design, this section carries on the opening pattern of long stretches of two-bar phrases, but avoids tedium by varying the vocal line, building each of three statements in excitement and drama. An Oriental-sounding mode based on the lowered second of the scale accompanies descriptions of the ocean, its terribleness, its moods. The voice stretches up at the expression of anger while the piano rumbles along undeterred. The  immensity of the sea is accompanied by a major sixth chord with wave-like crescendos and decrescendos that are pure foreshadowings of the giant orchestral climaxes of La Mer. The pentatonic passage lifts the voice to it’s second climax, the F# half a tone higher than the climax of the previous verse.

Verse 3:
O! si patiente,
Même quand méchante !
Un souffle ami hante
La vague, et nous chante :
« Vous sans espérance,
Mourez sans souffrance ! »

Oh! So patient, Even when wicked! A friendly breath haunts The waves, and to us sings, “You without hope, May you die without suffering!”

The texture changes as the key-signature of D Major – long suspected – arrives and as “Debussy the great composer of piano works” comes to the fore. This verse is the longest, as Debussy uses the piano as commentary more than accompaniment. The description – the “Impressionist aspect” – of the first verse started giving way to an emotional content in the second. With the third verse, the voice of Mary enters, and we are less concerned with yet more innovative ways of musically imitating waves. The mood of the poem changes suddenly, and so does the piano writing. The power of the driving waves gives way to the ‘spray catching one in the face’. As if the eye is pulled out of the depth of the ocean below to the heavens above, the hands move up the keyboard like hands knitting a fine filigreed veil to wear to church, or hands lifted to light a candle at mass. Pinkie notes high in the piano create a ghostly 4note bell-pattern that becomes a Leitmotif in the rest of the song. This melodic fragment seems to suggest the voice of Mary’s prayer which  shimmers over a pentatonic melody in the voice. For the first time in the song, the composer deliberately demands a very quiet Pianissimo from the pianist. This is only possible to achieve by the most delicate and yet surefooted stroking of the keys and ironically the “Mary Prayer” theme is the anchor for the hands, physically orientating themselves. The voice, calme et doux, rises again to the high F#, but there are no heroics this time. The voice takes its time to move from phrase to phrase, giving the piano more time to comment. In a passage straight from the Reflets dans léau (Reflections in the water) from Images – a great piano cycle still to come – from the depths of the piano, like a creature rising from the underworld, comes an octave figure based on the “Mary Prayer”, echoed in the high range for a two bar phrase as we have come to expect from this theme.

But Debussy was a genius, not a hack, and by adding one extra bar, and a modulation, creates breathless anticipation in the listener. Indeed, as the poet describes, with a colon, that the voice is about to sing, Debussy changes the 2-bar structures to add an extra bar, to create the right transition time and space to prepare for the actual miracle, hearing the voice of Mary. (Literally or figuratively does not really matter, as the poet himself put it in inverted commas. He is definitely quoting!)

For the voice of Mary, Debussy enters the realm of the impossible. Pianississimo is extremely quiet. There is something extreme about P or PP shrinking to PPP as much as it is for an F to stretch to FFF. It indicates a desire from the composer for a moment of greatest intimacy, tenderness and reverence, requiring the utmost in care, precision and attentiveness in execution. Bass note Bells create a suitably religious awe and the harmony changes radically to the Flattened Second of E Flat Major. Marked Lent, every note in the voice is marked with a Tenuto, as if the composer is saying: “Take your time, this is important, don’t miss a syllable!” (Or perhaps he meant to say “Prenez votre temps, c’est important, ne manquez pas une syllabe!”) And how strange it would seem that he does not use the “Mary Prayer” as we have come to know it in the song up to this point, but a version of it with the half-note dip lowered to a whole-note dip giving it a distinctly Gergorian-Chant-like feel. The rhythm is unhurried, reverent and suitable for the woman who inspires millions to say their “Hail Mary’s” daily.

Unhurried her prayer may be, but once she’s made her miraculous appearance, she is swiftly washed aside by a headlong chase back to the ship on the stormy seas: Revenez au 1er Mouvement on a modal rocking horse washes us back to the the open ocean:

Verse 4:
Et puis sous les cieux
Qui s’y rient plus clairs,
Elle a des airs bleus.
Roses, gris et verts…
Plus belle que tous,
Meilleure que nous !

And then under the skies that mock that they are brighter, it shows its colors blue Pink, grey, and green… More beautiful than anything, Better than we!

Debussy dispenses with the two-bar statement of the Arpeggio passage on the D Major chord which formed the introduction to Verse 1. The foreshortening is a compositional technique used by many great masters (Chopin in particular come to mind). It avoids a pedantic repetition of material simply for the sake of symmetry and propels the work forward even while repeating material already familiar to the listener. We think we are in for a repeat of Verse 1. As we sit back to enjoy the speedboat-ride to the end, the master does a hairpin bend: Trés Expressif and Pianissimo, the voice rises to G, the highest note of the song. Unlike what is heard in most performances, this high note is not meant to be a climax at all, it is a breathtaking moment of veneration of the glory of the sea, marveling at the colours. The singer is given the ultimate challenge of a sudden soft high note, and the pianist is given galumphing bass octaves and Four-Octave Arpeggios to bring right down in volume to a shimmering display of Nature’s palette.

Debussy La Mer est plus belle – final bars

The four bar coda En retenant jusqu’ a la fin (Holding back to the end)  - see musical example above - features the “Mary Prayer” theme, delicately spread out between the two hands in a bell-like playing style at which Debussy was a master. As always, he is rarely content to repeat himself, and the third bar varies the harmony slightly, as if the lowering from black notes to white notes in the fourth beat pulls back the energy to lazy crotchets that step towards a gentle Tierce de Picardi - docking safely in the harbour of the Tonic Major, all fears anxieties and great revelations dissolving. One final languorous stretch to a high G, reaches heavenward in an echo of religious ecstasy, before dissipating in the singer’s low register. I have heard a variant in the line “Plus belle que tous” where the singer sings a High A on “que” instead of E Flat, but I have not seen a printed version. The final phrase is so beautifully designed as it is, with the voice hugging the augmented 2nd interval, it hardly seems to require any alteration.

Dedication to Chausson: “La mer est plus belle”, L. 81 no. 1 (1891)

Claude Debussy at the piano, home of Ernest Chausson at Luzancy, August 1893. Chausson appears to be turning pages for Debussy

The song is dedicated to Amédée-Ernest Chausson (1855 – 1899), a promising young composer who died in a freak accident at age 44. He appears to have cycled straight into a brick wall. Given his recent depression, there has been the suggestion of suicide. A man of means, Chausson was part of the artistic Parisian inner circle, who entertained and befriended the great young minds of Paris. He and Debussy shared musical, artistic and literary interests, and there are similar themes and explorations in their music of the early 1890′s. By the time of his death, Chausson and Debussy were no longer on speaking terms: Chausson disapproved of Debussy’s infidelity with the singer Emma Bardac which had become public knowledge and would lead to the end of his marriage to his first wife.

La mer est plus belle (Claude Debussy / Paul Verlaine): Sung  by Gérard Souzay (Baritone) with Dalton Baldwin accompanying.

La mer est plus belle (Claude Debussy / Paul Verlaine): Sung by Eva-Karin Remback, soprano, Georg Öqvist accompanying.

La mer est plus belle (Claude Debussy / Paul Verlaine): Kurt Ollmann, baritone and Mary Dibbern, pianist.

La mer est plus belle (Achille-Claude Debussy 1862-1918) – FRENCH LYRICS by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) , no title, from Sagesse, in Sagesse III, no. 15, published 1880

La mer est plus belle
Que les cathédrales,
Nourrice fidèle,
Berceuse de râles,
La mer qui prie
La Vierge Marie !

Elle a tous les dons
Terribles et doux.
J'entends ses pardons
Gronder ses courroux.
Cette immensité
N'a rien d'entêté.

O! si patiente,
Même quand méchante !
Un souffle ami hante
La vague, et nous chante :
« Vous sans espérance,
Mourez sans souffrance ! »

Et puis sous les cieux
Qui s'y rient plus clairs,
Elle a des airs bleus.
Roses, gris et verts...
Plus belle que tous,
Meilleure que nous !

La mer est plus belle (Achille-Claude Debussy 1862-1918) – ENGLISH LYRICS by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) , no title, from Sagesse, in Sagesse III, no. 15, published 1880

The sea is more beautiful
Than any cathedral;
A nurse faithful,
A cradle-song of groans;
The sea over which prays
The Virgin Mary!

It has all qualities,
Terrible and sweet.
I hear its forgiveness,
The rumble of its anger;
This immensity
Has no intentions.

Oh! So patient,
Even when wicked!
A friendly breath haunts
The waves, and to us sings,
"You without hope,
May you die without suffering!"

And then under the skies
That mock that they are brighter,
It shows its colors blue
Pink, grey, and green...
More beautiful than anything,
Better than we!

Other settings of this poem include:

Jacques Beers (1902-1947) , “La mer est plus belle”, published 1943 [voice and piano], from Six chants de Paul Verlaine, no. 2, Amsterdam
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) , “La mer est plus belle”, published 1910 [voice and piano], Paris, Hamelle
André Dulaurens (1877-1932) , “La mer est plus belle” [voice and piano]
Louis Durey (1888-1979) , “La mer est plus belle”, op. 2 (Trois poèmes) no. 3 (1914). [voice and piano]
François-Joseph Sterck , “La mer est plus belle”, [1924]. [voice and piano]
Théodore Terestchenko (1888-?) , “Les vagues”, published 1913 [voice and piano], from Trois mélodies, no. 2, Paris, Hamelle

St. Etienne – an abandoned Cathedral in France

Star Candles (1942) – Music: Michael Head (1900-1976) /Text: Margaret Rose (1936)

Margaret Rose (died 1958) wrote the words of Star Candles (1942). The poem refers to the constellation ‘The Southern Cross’, which in South Africa is also known as ‘Star Candles’, following an old belief that each of the five pointers denotes a gift to the Christ Child. Head responds with a beguiling melody.  [from notes on Hyperion Records by Andrew Burn © 2012]

Star Candles (Head): The opening 5 bars sets up the material to be used to introduce the verses, but here it is heard in its entirety for the first and only time in the song. Head uses the first two-bar phrase to introduce the 2nd verse and the three-bar phrase (bar 3-5) to introduce the 3rd verse. This lends itself to a technique of short-term memory, i.e. recalling or anticipating material already heard, which gives the listener a sense of increased familiarity with the material, and hence heightened affection.

While not applied absolutely strictly, the song is predominantly in the Aeolian mode. The song is in D minor, but the leading tone C# is often flattened to a C natural. This gives the song a sacred quality, reminiscent of a Madrigal from an older era.  [Read More Here],

Head also uses the rhythm to create a melodic line that recalls Gregorian Chant. The freedom to move between duple and triple time give the song the impression of simultaneously being unhurried while gently tumbling into the next phrase.

Head avoids the temptation to let his solo singer loose with a cadenza. He extends the passage we heard earlier in the song. It stretches, both in rhythm and range, but keeps a tight reign on the structure. We have a cadenza of sorts, but it is just a little vocal ornament to round off an exquisite miniature. This restraint at the same time perhaps prevents Head from reaching the popularity of more obviously “Pro-Voice” Engish song composers such as Britten or even Vaughan-Williams, while it raises him to the stature of a worthy composer who puts the song – not the singer – first.

The song rocks along in an unhurried “Allegretto Tranquillo” with no faster semiquaver notes or longer sustained tones, further emphasising the feel of an ancient chant, making this song more reminiscent of a Christmas Carol than a pure Art Song. Rounded off by a charming Tierce de Picardi, this is one of Head’s most beautifully imagined miniatures; a tender Lullaby for Baby Jesus.

Star Candles — Michael Head

The sun’s in his cradle,
The bird’s in her nest,
The Shepherds are calling
The lambs home to rest.
Go, sleep little Jesus!
The wind’s riding by
To set all the candles
Alight in the sky.

A candle for Kingship,
Sweet laughter it brings
And mirth’s golden music,
The riches of Kings.
Go sleep little Jesus!
The wind’s riding by
To set all the candles
Alight in the sky

But oh! in the skytop
Up there I can see
A cross, it’s shining,
It’s shining on thee,
Go sleep, little Jesus!
The wind’s riding by
To set all the candles
Alight in the sky.

Barlow Bradford’s Utah Chamber Artists sing his arrangement of “Star Candles”

Michael Head was born in Eastbourne, UK to a journalist and barrister father and a mother who was an accomplished amateur singer and pianist. He started music lessons formally at 10 and went on to study Composition and Organ at the Royal Academy of Music. Curiously, given its importance in his subsequent career, he did not study singing any further while there. Head gave his first public recital as a self-accompanied singer at Wigmore Hall in 1929. After this debut performance, his fame grew rapidly. He gave several more recitals in the British Isles and in many parts of the world. Additionally he gave several radio recitals, both in Britain and Canada. He became Professor in Piano at the Royal Academy in 1927, a post he held until his retirement in 1975.

Head was appointed as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. This position required him to travel to many different countries, including South Africa and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). At the outbreak of World War II, he returned to London and continued teaching throughout the blitz. During this time, he gave hundreds of concerts in factories and in small towns. Head died in Cape Town whilst examining for the Associated Board in Rhodesia and South Africa, from a sudden and unexpected illness on 24 August 1976. [Bush, N., 1982, Michael Head: Composer, singer and pianist, Kahn & Averill, London. ISBN 978-0-900707-73-5.]

The largest part of Head’s output as a composer was songs. A comprehensive list of his 85 songs, plus texts, can be found in Singer’s Heaven, at Recmusic.org. Given such a large song output, it is not surprising that Christmas Songs would feature.

Other famous examples of  Head’s brand of Art Song/Christmas Carol are:

The Little Road to Bethlehem (“As I walked down the road at set of sun”), set to words by Margaret Rose, and

Slumber Song of the Madonna: (Sleep little baby, I love thee) set to words by Alfred Noyes.

From the romantic ballad to fully fledged artsong, Head’s range is quite impressive.

An Artsong about Christmas, but deffinitely not a Christmas Carol, Michael Head’s “Slumbersong of the Madonna” is an unexpectedly effective portrait of the human side of Mary, a mother tending to her little baby at bedtime. She calls him her baby and her King, and admits not being sure how to handle the balance of both the holy and maternal responsibility for the baby Jesus. The rocking triplets paint a picture of the young mother singing the baby to sleep, while unsettled harmonies reveal her sense of premonition. “Why should my singing so make me to weep” is so touchingly set to music and rhapsodic melismas give voice to a pure motherly love that is very affecting. Perhaps the harmonic language is touched with the sentimental brush and the piano interlude before the second verse doesn’t ring as true as it could have – a parlour-style climax seems to be building, but feels inappropriate within the confines of the text. It is most interesting to play, in that no phrases are repeated identically. Subtle changes of harmonies and rhytmic variation all reveal a composer of some skill and requires singing and playing of some sophistication to show it to its best advantage.

Although originally written for Alto voice, the song works well in transposition for soprano.

Some observations and musical examples:

Michael Head: Slumber Song of the Madonna (in this exceprt in E Flat Major) – This Bass Cleff passage from the opening piano prelude show the harmonic shifts with which the composer colours the repetitions of the same basic material, making this deceptively simple piece, particularly beguiling on the ear.

Michael Head: Slumber Song of the Madonna (Shown here in E Flat Major) – The opening phrase of the singer shows a simple melodic line outlining the major triad, while the accompaniment chromatically luxuriates from chord to chord, as if illustrating the calling to the arms of Morpheus.

Michael Head: Slumber Song of the Madonna – Not only subtly varying the accompaniment figures, the melody is also responsive to the changes in the text. An almost sentimental moment where the mother appears for a moment to forget the world around her while she kisses the baby, taking a moment to enjoy his smell and physcial warmth, while at the same time acknowledging a Divine purpose to both her role and His life with a poignant modulation to the Flattened Sixth chord on the word “king”.

Michael Head: Slumber Song of the Madonna (this excerpt in E Flat Major) – Very wide spaced chordal rhapsodising create a luxurious texture underneath the melismatic, improvisational chromatic semi-quavers in the voice-part. The singer sings the same passage twice, but the harmonies underneath them change, making the same notes sound fresh and beguiling. In performance, this passage can have an ecstatic and highly spiritual feel, as the vocalist, composer and piansit play with the harmonies and intervals, enjoying the last little yawn and stretch as the baby drifts off to sleep. As the voice floats off into dreamland, the piano echoes the rhythm of the voice, but, despite the apparent activity of a semi-quaver run, seems to draw the last bit of energy from both a tired mother and a tired baby. With a few more dreamy harmonic changes, the baby drifts off to sleep. And one suspects, it’s mommy as well.

Slumber Song of the Madonna: Michael Head (28 January 1900 – 24 August 1976), Published 1921 / Text by by Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) , no title, from Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems, in Slumber Songs of the Madonna, published 1907

Sleep, little baby, I love thee;
Sleep, little king, I am bending above thee!
How should I know what to sing
Here in my arms as I sing thee to sleep?

Hushaby low, rockaby so.

Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,
Mother has only a kiss for her king!
Why should my singing so make me to weep?
Only to know that I love thee, I love thee, Love thee, my little one, sleep.

Buy Sheet Music of Michael Head’s “Slumber Song of the Madonna” HERE.

Download Free Sheet Music of Michael Head Slumber Song of the Madonna in B Flat.
(Available from University of Rochester)

Michael Head was born in Eastbourne, UK to a journalist and barrister father and a mother who was an accomplished amateur singer and pianist. He started music lessons formally at 10 and went on to study Composition and Organ at the Royal Academy of Music. Curiously, given its importance in his subsequent career, he did not study singing any further while there. Head gave his first public recital as a self accompanied singer at Wigmore Hall in 1929. After this debut performance, his fame grew rapidly. He gave several more recitals in the British Isles and in many parts of the world. Additionally he gave several radio recitals, both in Britain and Canada. He became Professor in Piano at the Royal Academy in 1927, a post he held until his retirement in 1975.

Head was appointed as an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. This position required him to travel to many different countries, including South Africa and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). At the outbreak of World War II, he returned to London and continued teaching throughout the blitz. During this time, he gave hundreds of concerts in factories and in small towns. Head died in Cape Town whilst examining for the Associated Board in Rhodesia and South Africa, from a sudden and unexpected illness on 24 August 1976. [Bush, N., 1982, Michael Head: Composer, singer and pianist, Kahn & Averill, London. ISBN 978-0-900707-73-5.]

The largest part of Head’s output as a composer was songs. A comprehensive list of his 85 songs, plus texts, can be found in Singer’s Heaven, at Recmusic.org. Given such a large song output, it is not surprising that Christmas Songs would feature.

Other famous examples of  Head’s brand of Art Song/Christmas Carol are:

The Little Road to Bethlehem (“As I walked down the road at set of sun”), set to words by Margaret Rose, and

Star Candles (“The sun’s in his cradle”) set to words by Margaret Rose.(READ MORE)

From the romantic ballad to fully fledged artsong, Head’s range is quite impressive.

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)  was born in Wolverhampton, England. The Welsh coast and mountains were an early inspiration to Noyes. In 1898, he left Aberystwyth for Exeter College, Oxford, where he distinguished himself at rowing, but failed to get his degree because, on a crucial day of his finals in 1902, he was meeting his publisher to arrange publication of his first volume of poems, The Loom of Years (1902). His most famous poem, “The Highwayman”, was first published in the August 1906 issue of Blackwood’s Magazine, and included the following year in Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems. In a nationwide poll conducted by the BBC in 1995 to find Britain’s favourite poem, “The Highwayman” was voted the nation’s 15th favourite poem [Mason, Mark (1999). "Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)". Literary Heritage: West Midlands]

Noyes is often portrayed by hostile critics as a militarist and jingoist.Actually, he was a pacifist who hated war and lectured against it, but felt that, when threatened by an aggressive and unreasoning enemy, a nation could not but fight. On this principle, he opposed the Boer War, but supported the Allies in both the World Wars. In 1913, when it seemed that war might yet be avoided, he published a long anti-war poem called The Wine Press. One American reviewer wrote that Noyes was “inspired by a fervent hatred of war and all that war means”, and had used “all the resources of his varied art” to depict its “ultimate horror” [Featherstone, Simon. War Poetry: An Introductory Reader. Routledge, 1995, pp. 28, 56-57]
Other Settings of the poem include:

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) , “A slumber song of the Madonna”, published 1925. [voice and organ]
J. Frederick Keel (1871-1954) , “Slumber Song of the Madonna”, published 1913.
Colin Moncrieff Campbell Taylor (1881-1973) , “Sleep little baby”, published 1910. [soprano and SSAA chorus a cappella]

I’m sure we’re all familiar with various song transcriptions in the cello repertoire – Apres un Reve (Faure) and Beau Soir (Debussy) immediately spring to mind. and where there’s one, there will inevitably be more. After a LOT of listening, trying out ( there are many that just don’t quite work) we’re finally at the stage where we have a programme of some really beautiful gems.

So what goes into making a song transcription? It’s not just a question of playing the vocal part off the score because several factors have to be taken into consideration. Should it be played in the upper register or does that make it too “whiny” at times? Similarly the lower octave might sound too morose if it stays down too long and stands to be covered by the piano part. Certain keys just don’t work at all as neither register sounds any good in which case they have to be transposed but then you end up with everything in the same key.

The ” Colour” of the sound in French music is very important, and must often convey a certain fleetingness of phrase – my friend and colleague Professor Shirley Gie suggested the word Diaphonous which just about sums up that certain type of translucent sound that string players in particular have to achieve. Therefore bowing becomes rather important and is strongly linked to choice of tempo – too slow, (which might work for a voice) and the bowed sound becomes heavy and stultified, too fast and a certain amount of control is lost. String sound is idiomatic in its production, and needs time to breathe life into the phrases. Articulation and “enunciation” also comes into consideration – as a cellist I can not use the emotional facial expression to convey the meaning. That is the territory of a singer. Which repeated notes do I play and which do I replace with a longer sound that suits the cello? Can I articulate better with the bow or with the choice of fingering? Which string should I use , for they have different colours of sound?

Lots to give some thought to. Funny that -  when I was at college, my teacher always said I must sing on the cello, and many singers have told me that they were advised to sing like a cello. This journey has been and will continue to be a voyage of discovery in the world of song and I don’t regret one moment of it. Special thanks to my wonderful pianist Albert Combrink for suggesting it in the first place.

Read more about the French Song Project with Sarah Acres and Albert Copmbrink HERE.

Gabriel Fauré in his Apartment on Boulevard Malesherbes – Photographer Dornac (1858-1941). Date of publication : 1905. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département Musique)

 Alas! Alas! sad awakening from dreams

I call you, O night, give me back your lies,

A melody so exquisite that the words are almost superfluous, once heard, can never be forgotten.  Après un rêve is blessed with one of the most eloquent melodies ever created. Long gentle arches float like delicate silks in the air, animated in a gentle breeze of lazy triplets and coloured through exotic harmonies. The tender throbbing heartbeat that supports this free-floating beauty, is one of Fauré’s most effectively crafted accompaniments. Every chord change  either has a unison with a note from the previous chord, or a chromatic shift of a Semi-tone. This creates a physical sensation of clinging, or floating, as if the hands are embracing the chord changes as the music is embracing the emotions it is attempting to convey.  Fauré was fond of colourful chromatic shifts and unexpected harmonies crop up in many of his pieces – they can be perplexing and sometimes appear too brightly coloured for the surrounding harmonic cloth in which they find themselves. In this work though, Fauré struck gold. There is the sense of inevitability of harmony that characterises his greatest work, and yet it is unpredictable and pleasing to the ear, as fresh on the hundredth hearing as the first.

The two elements work together “in perfect harmony” propelling the song forward in motion, while creating a sense of unhurried experience of every nuance of emotion. When it builds to the climax it seems “appropriate” and in proportion, regardless of the text that might have inspired it. For this reason this particular song, more than most, has been transposed, transcribed and arranged for virtually every instrument. But it is not simply conceived as a vocalise.

 Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) was written in 1878 to a text by Romain Bussine. Awaking from a “dream of love” – with all the Jungian and Freudian implications implied by the term, the “dreamer” is filled with regret and longing for that which has passed. All that longing and those pain-filled memories are too much to fit into a term such as “nostaligia for a past love”, as some commentators have described. Bussine’s text is ecstatic, and we experience the feelings evoked by those “unknown splendours, divine flashes”.

Odilon Redon: Ophelia (1903)

Romain Bussine (1830–1899) was a French poet, baritone, and voice teacher who lived in Paris during the 19th century. In 1871, together with Camille Saint-Saëns and Henri Duparc, he founded the Société Nationale de Musique as a forum for promoting contemporary French chamber and orchestral music. Gabriel Fauré set one of his poems as Après un rêve, op. 7 no.1. The poem, based on an Italian poem titled “Levati sol che la luna é levatai,” is a soliloquy about a rapturous dream of a passionate encounter to which the singer longs to return, “though my dreams be but lying.” (Another setting by Fauré of a poem by Bussine is Sérénade Toscane.)

Bussine worked for many years as a voice teacher at the Paris Conservatory. A baritone, he occasionally gave recitals and performed in concerts in Paris; although he was not a prolific performer. He notably sang the role of the High Priest in the first hearing of the second act of Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah in a private performance in 1870. Among his notable pupils were composers Guillaume Couture and Achille Fortier. He died in Paris.

In July 1877 Fauré became engaged to Pauline Viardot’s daughter Marianne, with whom he was deeply in love.To his great sorrow, she broke off the engagement in November 1877, for reasons that are not clear. To distract Fauré, Saint-Saëns took him to Weimar and introduced him to Franz Liszt. This visit gave Fauré a liking for foreign travel, which he indulged for the rest of his life. Many writers have read into Après un rêve, the emotions of a broken hearted man who lost the love of his life. Fanciful or not, it is clear that the simple elegance and uncluttered composition is immensely powerful and expressive.

From 1878, he and Messager made trips abroad to see Wagner operas. They saw Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at the Cologne Opera; the complete Ring cycle at the Hofoper in Munich and at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London; and Die Meistersinger in Munich and at Bayreuth, where they also saw Parsifal. They frequently performed as a party piece their joint composition, the irreverent Souvenirs de Bayreuth. This short, up-tempo piano work for four hands sends up themes from The Ring. Fauré admired Wagner and had a detailed knowledge of his music, but he was one of the few composers of his generation not to come under Wagner’s musical influence.

“Beatrice” – Odilon Redon (Painted in 1885), two years before the cmposition of this song

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Fauré), Lyrics by Romain Bussine (1830-1899) IN FRENCH

Dans un sommeil que charmait ton image 
Je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage,
Tes yeux étaient plus doux, ta voix pure et sonore,
Tu rayonnais comme un ciel éclairé par l'aurore;

Tu m'appelais et je quittais la terre
Pour m'enfuir avec toi vers la lumière,
Les cieux pour nous entr'ouvraient leurs nues,
Splendeurs inconnues, lueurs divines entrevues,

Hélas! Hélas! triste réveil des songes
Je t'appelle, ô nuit, rends moi tes mensonges,
Reviens, reviens radieuse,
Reviens ô nuit mystérieuse!

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Fauré), Lyrics by Romain Bussine (1830-1899) IN ENGLISH

In a slumber which held your image spellbound
 I dreamt of happiness,  passionate mirage,
 Your eyes were softer, your voice pure and sonorous,
 You shone like a sky lit up by the dawn;

 You called me and I left the earth
 To run away with you towards the light,
 The skies opened their clouds for us,
 Unknown splendours, divine flashes glimpsed,

 Alas! Alas! sad awakening from dreams
 I call you, O night, give me back your lies,

 Return, return radiant,
 Return, O mysterious night.

Download Sheet Music for Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré):

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) in B Minor

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) in C Minor

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) in C Minor arranged for Solo Piano

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) in D Minor

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed by a true “vocal aristrocrat” Gérard Souzay and an uncredited pianist.

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed Live by Diana Damrau, Xavier de Maistre (accompanying on the HARP). The Harp accompaniment gives it a shimmering quality, sustaining the chords and harmonies without getting thick – one of the dangers of the piano version.

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) in an extraordinarily sensitively sung orchestrated version by Pop Superstar Barbra Streissand. “Classical Barbra” was recorded in 1976 and contained classical artsongs by Debussy, Wolf, Schumann and others and was praised highly by artists such as Leonard Bernstein. Some classical singers have criticised some of her vocal expression, or some placing of the note, but it still remains one of the most heartfelt and exquistely emotional performances of this work I ever heard.

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed by Régine Crespin and John Wustman

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed in the Casals Arrangement for Cello, by Mstislav Rostropovich and A. Dedjuchin

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed by Galina Vishnevaskaya and her husband Mstislav Rostropovich.

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed by Violinist Joshua Bell, in an orchestrated version. Michael Stern, conducts the Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed on the Flugelhorn by Virtuoso trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov and uncredited pianist, Live in Tokyo 1996

Après un rêve Op. 7 No. 1 (Gabriel Fauré) performed on CELLO by Perényi Miklós on cello and Kocsis Zoltán on Piano

Élégie opus 24 for Cello and Orchestra (Gabriel Fauré), performed live by Yo Yo Ma. The tone of this work seems to echo aspects of “Après un rêve”.